ROCKY

OVERVIEW

ROCKY is a powerful, 3D Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) program that quickly and accurately simulates the granular flow behavior of different shaped and sized particles within a conveyor chute, mill, or other materials handling equipment.

Several capabilities set ROCKY apart from other DEM codes, including non-round particle shapes, the ability to simulate particle breakage without loss of mass or volume, the visualization of boundary surface reduction due to wear, and more.

Mining and manufacturing organizations all over the world are choosing ROCKY DEM software to evaluate their bulk material handling systems because ROCKY simulates granular flow quickly, accurately, and with more similarity to real-world conditions than ever before. With its ability to create realistic shapes that settle and compact just like actual particles, and its variable sticky and dust-like conditions, ROCKY can replicate nearly any type of material handling environment imaginable.

The streamlined calculations and GPU processing capabilities included within ROCKY produce faster and more accurate results when compared to other DEM products. And ROCKY can simulate more than 5 million particles in nearly limitless size and shape distributions from rocks to grain, metal to plastic, and beyond.

FEATURES

Animated & Vibrating Boundaries

Easy CAD Geometry Import and Simulation Setup

Graphical and At-a-Glance Wear and Power Data

FEA Integration with ANSYS

360° Wraparound Movie View Transitions

3D Surface Wear Modification

Sticky and Dry Contact Rheologies

Non-Round Particle Shapes

Large Particle Size Distributions

Double-Precision Processing, now with GPU Capabilities

Streamlined Calculations

Particle Breakage

ROCKY is software package that can be catered to the unique needs of each company. The team of developers at ESSS is empowered to adapt the program code to meet the requests of each client as desired.

COMMUNICATION

Allows the import of XGL, STL and DXF files that can be exported from CAD programs such as Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD

Allows geometry and impact data to be saved for easy import into a Finite Element Methods (FEM) analysis program.

ROCKY AND ANSYS COUPLING

Granular materials are commonly found in nature and are also used in many industries, but a better understanding of their behavior is still needed. Sometimes particle flow can be deformed from solid bodies or soils; others may flow more similar to liquids or even compress like gases.

Therefore, there is an increasing need to design protective structures that can withstand or mitigate the impulsive loading due to the impact of a particle or bulk of solids. A reliable predictive model to determine the behavior of bulk solids and their effect on equipment structure can solve, or even avoid completely, many of these problems.

The simplest form of a particle-to-structure interaction (PSI) model is a one-way coupling where the DEM solver (e.g, ROCKY) provides load-sets (stresses generated by the solids within the equipment) to be used in a structural analysis tool (e.g, ANSYS). This coupling requires the use of the ANSYS (or other FEM solver) to predict the structural response to the loads estimated by ROCKY. ROCKY has a fast and accurate method of coupling the DEM and FEM methods on non-coincidental meshes. The load estimated by the ROCKY analysis is passed to ANSYS to predict the structural response, or one-way coupling.